


Books

by pirategirljack



Series: Weekly Fic Project 2017 [11]
Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: 12 monkeys season 3, Books, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Roadtrips, i had a headcanon i wanted to make into a thing, jenncon, weekly fic project 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-13 21:29:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11193822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: Jones tasks Deacon with getting books for Olivia, and sends Jennifer with him.





	Books

6-13-17  
Deacon found himself bored and wishing he had a book. Reading was one of his top five passtimes, tied with drinking and slightly ahead of stabbing someone who really deserved it. Back at the Camp, when he was a king, he had practically a whole library. One of the trucks was just for hauling his books around when they moved camp--which they did fairly often, what with having to keep three hundred men fed and provisioned and all--and sometimes the Boys would bring books they found on their scavenging missions back to him. 

Most scavs didn’t read much, a combination of the hierarchy of needs meaning survival trumped intellectual pursuits and how many of them were too young to have read much in school before the end of the world. But Deacon was a teenager when it all went to shit, and the West 7 Containment Zone happened to have two bookstores and a sweet library where he’d hide out before everything devolved and he’d had to take over to keep any semblance of order. And besides, he was a heavy reader before then, too. One of the many many things his dad hated, but all the bitching and book-burning just made him more likely to read where his dad could see him, really.

So when Deacon had made his rounds for the third time with nothing changed, and Hannah didn’t have anything else she needed him for, he was on his way back to his room, thinking maybe he’d stop in and see what Jennifer was doing, when he heard Jones needed some books for their captive guest.

“I can find some,” he offered.

“We have enough here, Mr Deacon. No need for a trip outside our defenses.”

“Look, to be honest, I need something to do. I might get bored. When I’m bored, I might get...creative.” He didn’t mean anything specific by that, but he knew what his reputation was and he wasn’t above leaning on that to get his way.

Jones stared him down. He let his hand drift to the hilt of his knife. Lifted an eyebrow. She lit a cig. He waited.

And finally, she threw her hands up in a “who gives a crap” sort of gesture and waved him off with the hand holding the cigarette. “Fine. Find her something to keep her occupied for a while. We have no idea how long she’ll be staying.”

Deacon had some thoughts about her staying at all, but he decided not to comment, surprising himself a little. Getting stabbed a lot had made him more careful, sometimes. Or more over it. Whichever.

“Jake Ms. Goines with you.”

“Um--”

“She should know what Olivia prefers to read, and likely could use the fresh air as well.”

What the hell. He went on to his room and looped by Jennifer’s on the way toward the way out. “Wanna go on a roadtrip?” he said as he knocked on her open door. “Jones needs books for out guest and I need some air.”

She looked up from her latest pile of sketches, her hands covered in charcoal and a few smudges on her cheek and forehead where she’d pushed her hair out of the way, and grinned like the sun rising. “I’ll get the snacks.”

\--  
She met him at the door wearing a hat to keep her hair out of the way and an extra sweater to keep warm, and he handed her a gun. She looked at it sideways but knew not to argue by now. She put it in her pocket and he holstered his.

“Where’re we off to?”

“There’s an old library a few miles out, might be something good there. If not, I know a few others, some bookstores. We’ll take our time and get something good.”

“Not that she deserves it.”

“Then we’ll get her something bad. Come on.”

\--  
“She used to bring you books,” Jennifer said, suddenly, when they were on the road. He was focused on avoiding collapsed buildings and massive potholes--roman roads were still drivable two thousand years later, but the roads built by the good old US of A were already half reclaimed by weather after one generation--and he startled a little at the sound of her voice. He glanced at her; she was facing the open window, waving her hand in the wind like a dolphin jumping in water. “Old me. Chicken me. You used to trade with her.”

“You remember that?”

“Not really remember. Pre-member maybe. She’s dead but she’s still here--” she tapped the side of her head with her free hand, “--still talking, still doing stuff in her past and my future. Your past.”

“It was part of the trade deal we had with the Daughters. The Keeper wanted classified information, I wanted books, she wanted newspapers. We had a thing.”

“A thing.” She said it neutrally, with no inflection, but he could practically feel the cogs moving in her head.

“It was just a deal. There were lots of them, back when there were more people around the area.”

“She was your friend?”

“Maybe. I didn’t really have friends.”

“Hm.”

\--  
“I can’t believe so many books survived this long!” Jennifer called from somewhere across the room, and he wished she’d be quieter, but he’d already swept the place and it looked abandoned, so he didn’t tell her to. Everyone was always quieting her back at the lab; let her be loud away from it. He caught a glance of her with her arms full of half-water-warped paperbacks as she wandered through one of the bars of sunlight slicing down through the broken roof.

“Not a lot of readers left. You’ll notice the survival reference section is gutted.”

She made a happy sound at another shelf and he wandered over with his own stack of books. 

“What’d you find?”

“Only the best thing EVER--the crazy kook section!”

He leveled a look on her. “Olivia doesn’t seem like the conspiracy theory kind.”

“EXACTLY! She likes, like, pholosphy and books dissecting religion and psychology, all that ivy league upper class crap. It’ll kill her if we bring her THIS.”

She held up a book about crystals, one of several from the shelf, but the one with the most garish cover and least reasonable title. “You’re a cold torturer, lady.”

“I’m barely getting started, ScavKing.”

\--  
They came back to the lab after a long day of filling the back of the truck with whatever caught their eye at five different stops. Jennifer staggered back to her own room with both arms full of art books and scifi and novelizations of movies he barely remembered and she’d quoted at him as she showed her finds, and wouldn’t accept help carrying them, but he watched her all the way down the hall just in case. She was cackling, delighted, and he caught himself smiling, too.

He handed off the books they’d chosen for Olivia to the Daughters charged with taking care of her and they looked skeptically at him when they saw the titles. He shrugged. “Mother’s prerogative.”

Back in his own room, he lined up his finds along the back edge of the desk every room had and he’d had little use for until now, then picked one up and flipped to the first page, leaning back on the back two legs of his chair and swaying back and forth a little like a rocking chair. It smelled like dirt and a little like mildew, but it also had that old-book smell, unmistakable, sweet and woody. He didn’t stick his nose in it, but he did sigh and took a deep breath of it.

A tap at the door. He dropped the legs of the chair down to the floor and turned to find Jennifer there, a bundle in her hands, wrapped up in one of her sketches. “Got you a present. Since you took me with you. It was fun.”

She darted in and left it on his desk instead of in his hands, and then ducked back to the doorway, watching.

Never not a surprise, that one. He opened the present to find a gorgeous and very well preserved edition of Shakespearean plays and sonnets, the cover decorated in faded gold. “Jennifer. Thank you.”

“She said you like classics.”

“I never told her that, she just always knew.” He paused, blinked a few times.

“What?”

“Maybe this is how she knew--because you’re her before she was her, and you’re here.”

Jennifer grinned again. “Timey wimey,” she said, and ducked out of his doorway.

“Huh. Yeah. Timey wimey.”

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my weekly fic project tho I'm literally so far behind by now that I don't even know how far behind I am! But I haven't written 12m fic in AGES!
> 
> If you have any requests, leave them in the comments and I'll see what I can do! (no guarantees, but if you've got a good one, I want to hear it! and not just for this fandom; look through the rest and see what I write for!)


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